This isn’t a difficult adventure.  You will be rewarded by a unique natural skylight window inside of a large alcove and amazing views of the San Rafael desert area!

I’ll start off by saying that there are multiple trailheads for this trail.  When I visited, there were RVs all over blocking my access to the real trailhead, so I just parked a little bit before and followed a different trail to Wild Horse Window.

The trail starts off on a large flat area where free camping is available.  I followed a narrow trail down to a dry wash and then saw some cairns.  I figured this was part of the trail to the window so I followed it.  The trail eventually led me out of the dry wash and onto sandstone for the remaining of the hike.  The uneven sandstone provided easier hiking, but I also rolled my ankle a few times.  You won’t always see a trail on this adventure.  This is why you need to use a map or have decent route finding skills to get to the window.  I just plugged in my GPS coordinate for Wild Horse Window and just hiked in that general direction.   This seemed to be the best tactic for where I was starting.  It isn’t difficult to find, but if you don’t know where the window is, then you may not actually find it.

The trail gently gains elevation and you will soon see where the alcove is for Wild Horse Window.  From here I followed a small canyon up to where the window was located.

As you approach the giant alcove you will notice that there are actually TWO alcoves! The left one just goes up and ends with lots of vandalism at the back.

The right alcove has the Wild Horse Window and the pictographs.  There is also lots of vandalism in this alcove too.  Lots of people have defaced the pictographs or carved their names on the sandstone.  It’s sad that people feel the need to deface this beautiful site.

The pictographs are on the north side of the alcove.  Some appear to be ancient and others appear to be recent.  The colors don’t really match with the pictographs of the area and I’ve read on some outdoor forums that the pictographs are a recent creation by bored hikers.  There are other pictographs in the area, but I didn’t have time to see those.

Wild Horse Window is a pretty large circular natural window in the sandstone ceiling of the alcove.  After eating a snack and watching the clouds pass through the window, I decided to hike above to see what it looks like. I found a steep yet not overly difficult trail to the top and found that someone has wrapped webbing around a tree so they could rappel through the window.  Obviously, you’ll need to use caution as it is about a 60+ ft drop to the bottom of the alcove if you did fall.